


Blame It On The Drink

by shewhoguards



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, Humour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 01:07:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8424658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: How did the Nac Mac Feegle get kicked out of the Queen's realm?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Etnoe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Etnoe/gifts).



> It is surprisingly hard to write the Nac Mac Feegle's accent, but hopefully I pulled it off!

"You were supposed to steal a _child_ ," the Queen said, nearly spitting the words in her fury. " _That_ is not a child!"

The Nac Mac Feegle studied the old man in front of them with poorly acted bewilderment. 

"Is it not a bairn, Mistress?"

"Ach, but it's bald enough to be one."

"And it likes the sweeties!" Medium Jock waved the packet he had found enthusiastically. "They're not _nice_ sweeties," he was forced to admit, "but we thought, well, the Quin can give it nicer sweeties, is that not right, Mistress?"

"Is that not right, _Your Majesty_ ," the Queen corrected them in an angry hiss.

"Is that not right, Mistress Your Majesty," he agreed unabashed.

"How exactly did you mistake this.. person for a baby?" she demanded, prodding the human with a toe.

You didn't tell the Queen no. You didn't tell her than humans could overlook the occasional sheep, or even a cow, but babies were looked for and mourned over for decades after. Nor did you try to explain that the old man had no-one left to miss him, that his days were long and lonely in the human world but in the Queen's country he could happily while away his last days believing himself to be in his second childhood.

"Ach well," Rob Anybody said cheerfully. "I guess we was drunk."

 

***

"Guard the places where the worlds run together!" the Queen snarled. "Wasn't that what I told you to do?"

"Oh aye, Mistress, that was it all right."

"On account of us being so fighty, us being a famously fighty people."

"An' we guarded it well, Mistress! Shed much blood guarding it, we did."

"Each _other's_ blood!" The Queen did not despair, but looking over the bedraggled crew she might have been tempted.

There was some shuffling of feet. "Ach well, Mistress, after Wee Jock got his foot stuck in my ear I mighta got a wee bit distracted on who I was fighting."

"Aye, and then he was biting me so I figured give him a good wallop and--"

The Queen didn't believe in excuses, not that the Nac Mac Feegle cared. The Queen wouldn't understand that sometimes there were humanfolk who entered their realm with cold iron looking for fairy gold, but sometimes the person galloping over the gap where the wall betwixt the worlds was weak was just a man mad with worry over his sick wife and in too much of a desperate hurry to notice where he might have been.

The Queen wouldn't understand, so the Nac Mac Feegle wouldn't burden her by telling her.

"Ach," Rob Anybody said instead. "Ye know how it is, Mistress. We'd just had a wee bit too much to drink."

***

"All I asked you to do was turn the milk sour!" By now the Queen had learned to scale her expectations of the Nac Mac Feegle down considerably, but it seemed even those were too much.

"Well, we would have, Mistress, but y'see--"

"Aye, there was this bottle of drink in the room, ev'ryone knows 'tain't fair distractin' a feegle with drink."

"Did you turn the drink sour?" she asked, voice chill with sarcasm.

"Ach no, Mistress, but we drank it and reckon that's close enough."

"Let me guess," she said heavily. "You were drunk."

Rob Anybody beamed. "Well, nae just on that, Mistress, but the second bottle we found helped!"

***

"So, how _did_ you get kicked out of the Queen's realm?" Tiffany demanded, years later.

Rob thought back to the Queen and her orders, and to things even Feegle wouldn't do, no matter who ordered them. He shrugged and grinned, just a harmless little blue man who stole sheep sometimes. "Ach well, Mistress, y'know how it is," he said cheerfully. "Guess she just dinnae like the drinkin'."


End file.
